


Their Room

by Deangerous



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Sex, One Shot, Romance, Serial: s118 Kinda, Serial: s124 Snakedance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:01:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23185216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deangerous/pseuds/Deangerous
Summary: Tegan helped Nyssa pick out a wicker chair. Then Nyssa fell in love with her. Now she has to sit in that chair and watch Tegan suffer because the Mara are cruel and life isn't fair.
Relationships: Nyssa of Traken/Andrew Harper (Mentioned), Tegan Jovanka/Nyssa of Traken
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Their Room

Nyssa remembered them finding this chair. Her fingers dug in to the wicker arms as the memories flooded over her. The bustle of the crowd around them, voices from a thousand different worlds haggling and bartering and shouting. The Doctor looking at a bit of technology on a merchant's stand, eyes narrowed as he tried to discern where it had been acquired. Adric (Adric who she didn't think about because it hurt the same way thinking about her father did, hot and stabbing and painful) wondering over an abacus. 

And Tegan looking at a chair. A wooden chair with a high, wide back. Wicker, maybe. Or maybe something alien. 

"Nyssa, what do you think of this chair?" 

"It's a bit ostentatious isn't it?" Nyssa had said, a smile playing on her lips. Tegan had a habit of finding the strangest bits of furniture for the TARDIS. 

"Ostentatious? It's nice. It'll look nice in your room, next to that big metal _thing_ you like so much" Tegan decided. This had been early on. Before the Mara. Before long nights of holding Teagan as she cried. Screamed. Forced herself to stay awake. When their room had just been Nyssa's. When Tegan had slept in seemingly every bedroom the TARDIS had to offer, trying to find the one that felt 'right' (It had turned out it was the company, not the bed itself, that was an issue, a fact that made Nyssa feel warm). 

She didn't feel warm now. The whole room felt cold, icey, as she watched the Doctor standing over Tegan, splayed out on their bed. He wasn't being kind, she realised, in some dull, distant part of her brain. When the Doctor wasn't being kind it meant he was worried. Nyssa was worried too. But she wished he would stop shouting at Tegan. Telling her to leave the garden where little six year old Tegan had been happy. To continue the search for the Mara that apparently still lurked in Tegan's dreams. 

After the Doctor had paid for the chair, and the abacus Adric had broken trying to make it "account for negative numbers" they had carried it back to the TARDIS, laughing at the absurdity of it all. They had set it up in her room, struggling to get it through the door as Adric watched, teasing them. And as they stood there, sweating and gasping for breath, Tegan had locked eyes with her and smiled. A brilliant smile, a smile you didn't see very often. And without Nyssa even thinking about it she had smiled back, shyly. Just a slight upturn of her lips that seemed to make Tegan's smile a thousand times brighter. 

"You can sit in it when you read" Tegan had said. 

"I sit on my bed when I read" Nyssa replied, not thinking about how this was probably Tegan trying to look out for her in some way. 

"Well I can sit in it when I come in here whilst your reading instead of both of us cramming on to the bed" 

"I like having you in my bed" 

Adric had made a rather unflattering noise at that point. One that had caused Tegan, suddenly bright red and refusing to meet Nyssa's eyes, to chase after Adric yelling about dirty little pervert boys. 

Nyssa didn't know what she'd said to cause such a fuss. But she did like how Tegan looked when her cheeks flushed red. 

She could see Tegan panicking as the Doctor pushed on. She knew it was right. Knew it was for the best. But she hated watching it, hated watching Tegan like this. In their bed. The bed where they had first kissed. 

It was soon before the Mara (Because everything about their relationship was before the Mara and after, the only division that mattered), not long after they found the chair, and Nyssa was sat on her bed, barefoot, legs crossed, reading a book the Doctor had recommended to her. Pride and Prejudice, maybe. Tegan was sat in the chair reading some sort of magazine, an ' alien gossip rag' she had called it when she had found it in the TARDIS library, grinning ear to ear. Content in silence. 

But Nyssa wasn't content. She missed the presence of Tegan in the bed next to her. She usually took up so much room it became annoying, laying sideways across the bed on her stomach, her feet kicked up behind her, forcing Nyssa to entangle with her to get any level of space. 

But now it was gone she missed it. How was she supposed to tell Tegan that? 'Tegan I miss you spreading yourself annoyingly across my bed and taking up all the space, please come back and shove your cold feet in to my legs' didn't seem like a very human thing to say. 

"Aren't you uncomfortable?" Nyssa asked instead. Tegan looked up, confused. 

"What?" 

"That chair. I don't think it's very comfortable". It wasn't comfortable. She hated the way the wooden weave dug into her bare skin if she dared to sit in it anything less than fully clothed. Hated how you couldn't recline in to the arms. Hated how it forced you to sit up straight and watch the woman who made you feel so much joy in pain as an alien you barely recognised sometimes stood over her. 

"You said you liked it" Tegan had replied, voice raising about half a decibel. 

"It looks nice, I'll admit. I just don't have much use for it. I mostly just keep clothes on there" 

That thought seemed to amuse Tegan. 

" _You_ keep your clothes on a chair?" 

"Sometimes" said Nyssa, suddenly feeling under attack. 

"You, Mrs Prim and Proper, don't hang your clothes up the second you take them off?" 

"Sometimes I like to relax. Or I'm tired. You're avoiding my point" 

"Well to be honest with you Nyssa I don't really understand what your point is. I'm sat over here so we can hang out without you clearly being annoyed by me taking up all the space on your bed. It's fine"

"Not if you're uncomfortable" 

"I'm not uncomfortable. Just… less comfortable than I would be in your bed" 

"In my bed?" 

Tegan seemed to realise her Freudian slip the second she said it.

"On your bed. Sitting on your bed. I wouldn't get in your bed that would be too…" 

"Intimate?" 

Tegan made a noise similar to the one Adric had made. 

"Well, if you don't mind" Tegan said, crossing to the bed and making herself comfortable. 

They lay there for a while, not talking. But touching. Tegan's leg was pressed against Nyssa's arm. Nyssa's foot rested on Tegan's hip. Every part of Nyssa that touched Tegan felt warm, comfortable. Soon she could barely concentrate on her book, the feeling was all she could focus on. 

Eventually Tegan sat up, stretching and breaking the spell Nyssa had found herself under. 

"Well if I'm going to find somewhere to kip tonight I should probably start looking now. The TARDIS has a habit of moving the bedrooms about. I saw a nice one I wanted to try, full of old Victorian dresses so hopefully it doesn't take me too long to find" 

"It's a bit late now, isn't it?" There weren't really days and nights on the TARDIS, but it did a good job approximating then for humans. And as far as Nyssa could tell, it was what a human would call past bed time. 

"I… Yeah, I guess" 

"Well then, you should stay here tonight" 

"Nyssa, I don't know…" 

"It doesn't make sense for you to wander around the TARDIS looking for a bed when there's a perfectly good one right here" 

"Wouldn't it be a bit weird?" 

"Doesn't Earth have a culture of sleepovers?" 

"Yes but that's for children mostly. For adults it means... a different thing" 

"I haven't come across this meaning" 

Tegan looked at her, hard. She looked torn, unsure in a way Nyssa didn't often see her. Later, Nyssa would learn why. About Earth and how they viewed what they were doing. About how Teagan had grown up feeling the way she was only supposed to feel about boys about girls too, and how it had scared her until she pushed it away. And how Nyssa had scared her. Because she brought it right back. All of it was in that look, that look which Nyssa didn't understand at the time. 

"OK" said Tegan. 

There was an awkward fumbling after that. A toothbrush had to be found, pyjamas picked. They brushed their teeth elbow to elbow, turned their backs as the other got changed and crawled into the bed together, lying stiff as boards next to one another. Suddenly touching seemed to be off limits. Different.

Until Nyssa rolled on to her side. 

"Tegan?" she said softly, hoping Tegan wasn't asleep. She was given an answer by Tegan rolling on to her side to face her. 

"Yes Nyssa?" 

"I can't sleep. I'm not comfortable" 

"I can leave if you like" said Tegan, half starting to get up. Nyssa grabbed her arm. 

"No, Tegan I just… I need to get comfortable. I think I would like this more" 

"Facing each other?" 

"Yes" 

She could see Tegan's smile in the dark. Fond but also melancholy. 

"Of course you would" 

"Is that a problem?" 

Tegan stretched out an arm, pulling Nyssa a bit closer and wrapping her in a hug. 

"No, Nyssa, it's fine" 

"Good" 

And then Nyssa kissed Tegan. She didn't know why she did it. Their faces were so close together it just seemed natural. A chaste kiss. Friendly kiss. They did it in lots of cultures, even some on Earth. Tegan was just… There. And her lips looked nice. 

"Goodnight Tegan" Nyssa said to the shocked silence, before closing her eyes and happily falling asleep. 

The next day they met the Mara. And when Tegan appeared at her door, cheeks stained with tears, Nyssa let her in without questioning it. There were no more kisses. But they slept, face to face, every night. Tegan would cry in Nyssa's arms, head buried in her shoulder, until finally she would fall asleep, Nyssa's hand stroking her short hair. Her breath soft, comforting whispers. 

After that things seemed to become a blur. Cyberman, Adric, pain, both of them crying in Nyssa's bed, heaving sobs that seemed to last a lifetime. Then Concord. Then leaving Tegan behind. 

Then it was just her and the Doctor. And in some ways it was better. They battled Daleks and Cybermen. Met Isaac Newton and Thomas Brewster and Adric, one last time. They wandered not as Doctor and companion but as friends. Equals. 

And when they came to spend a season in Stockbridge she met Andrew. Andrew who taught her a lot of things about herself. Who made her realise she had felt what she felt for him before. For an Australian girl with a big mouth and a heart to match. 

So when they found her, in Amsterdam, and Tegan said she was coming with them, she knew. That night, she waited. Tegan appeared at her door, their door, bags in hand, grinning at her. 

"Got room for some extra clothes on that chair?" 

This time when Nyssa kissed her it wasn't chaste. They talked all night about what they had been doing since they parted. Intertwined on the bed. Trading kisses between stories until the TARDIS decided it was daytime again. 

And now? Despite finally getting her back, Nyssa was further away from Tegan than ever. Sat on the stupid wicker chair, wishing she could tear it apart with her bare hands as the Doctor forced his way around Tegan's mind like it was nothing more than a mildly interesting novel. 

That wasn't fair. But Nyssa didn't need to be fair. She was in love. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this whilst watching "Snakedance" because honestly they share a bedroom and we're just not genna mention it? Tried to keep it as canon compliant to Classic Who/Big Finish as possible but probably took a few liberties.


End file.
